Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Sheet rock and brand new lumber from the hardware store seem awfully boring – and incredibly wasteful – when you see the beautiful homes and other structures that can be built from recycled materials. An entire Buddhist temple made from glass bottles, modern modular shipping container homes, houseboats perched on land and resort lodging in a vintage ‘60s airplane are just a few of the awesome buildings that make use of unconventional and sometimes offbeat recycled junk.

Bottles

Don’t throw those empty glass beer bottles in the recycling bin – use them to build a house! Or, perhaps, an absolutely amazing Buddhist temple in Thailand. It took one million beer bottles to create this temple, which stands not only as proof that recycled and reclaimed building materials can be truly beautiful, but as a reminder of the waste that we generate.

Because of their translucency and ability to hold thermal mass, glass bottles are also often used in cob building to enhance natural daylighting for a stained glass effect.

Silos

Who would have thought that grain silos could be so luxurious? Ubiquitous sights in rural pastures, disused grain silos can often be purchased and moved to create unusual circular homes. Some people use them for quick, upcycled eco-friendly dwellings on the cheap, while others have given them a remarkably modern makeover. Grain silos even have potential for durable, inexpensive prefab housing.

Cans

When John Milkovisch retired, he got bored – but he didn’t turn to golf for entertainment. He began adding ‘aluminum siding’ to his Houston, Texas home in the form of flattened beer cans “for both practical and decorative reasons”, he says on his website. The house is now covered in 50,000 cans.

Tires

Millions upon millions of tires end up in landfills every year in the U.S. alone – but many are salvaged for creative uses like – drumroll please – building houses and other structures. Packed with rammed earth, tires make an incredibly solid building material that helps retain heat in winter and keep the building cool in the summertime. Off-gassing is said to be a non-issue, and tires work especially well when built into the earth as earthships often are.

Ships

Boats aren’t just for the water – as proven by numerous ‘house boats’ seemingly stranded on land, which people actually use as a primary residence. And how better to recycle a ship that’s no longer seaworthy? Huge ships like the Great Lakes Shipping Boat (top) – now known as The Ship Residence on an island in Lake Erie at Put-in-Bay, Ohio – make incredible seaside mansions that are quite a sight when seen from the water.

Wood Pallets

Wood pallets are plentiful, thrown out every day by companies that no longer trust them to keep merchandise safe during shipping. So how could they possibly be reused as a building material? Well, wood pallets are often still in great shape and can easily be nailed back together. And while they may not be a great load-bearing material for anything other than a shed, they do make a fantastic addition to building exteriors to filter sunlight.

Cardboard

A cardboard building may sound like the most temporary of structures – something you expect to find in a shantytown, not a suburban neighborhood. That it is, but imagine how such a material could be put to use for inexpensive emergency shelters that set up ultra-fast. Architects Stutchbury and Pape developed a $35,000 flat-packed prefab cardboard house made from 100% recycled materials with a waterproof outer membrane made of HDPE plastic.

Scrap Metal

Surrounded by industrial scrap metal every day for years, a former scrapyard owner saw a lot of potential for reuse – and put those ideas to work in his own home, a modern metal masterpiece 90 minutes northwest of Toronto. A rusted metal gate made from an old truck chassis, old galvanized steel siding and I-beams rescued from a demolition job are just a few elements of the mostly recycled home. And what will happen to this recycled home when it’s finally due to be demolished?

“With most houses, when they’re torn down, everything goes into a bin,” homeowner S. J. Sherbanuk told Dwell. “When this house gets pulled down 60 or 80 years from now, they won’t even need a bin. It’s all gonna get reused.”

Airplanes

They’re not exactly known for comfort when you’re flying the friendly skies, but take out all those seats and airplanes are really roomy. Just take a peek inside the 727 Fuselage Home at the Costa Verde resort in Costa Rica, a two-bedroom suite made from a refurbished vintage 1965 Boeing 727 airframe. Retired from its former hectic life as part of South Africa Air’s fleet, the salvaged airplane serves as a cozy and unique lodging perched atop a 50-foot pedestal for the feel of being in the air.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

One of the best aspects of science has always been its readiness to admit when it got something wrong. Theories are constantly being refigured, and new research frequently renders old ideas outdated or incomplete. But this hasn’t stopped some discoveries from being hailed as important, game-changing accomplishments a bit prematurely. Even in a field as rigorous and detail-oriented as science, theories get busted, mistakes are made, and hoaxes are perpetrated. The following are ten of the most groundbreaking of these scientific discoveries that turned out to be resting on some questionable data. It is worth noting that most of these concepts are not necessarily “wrong” in the traditional sense; rather, they have been replaced by other theories that are more complete and reliable.

#10 - The Discovery of Vulcan

Vulcan was a planet that nineteenth century scientists believed to exist somewhere between Mercury and the Sun. The mathematician Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier first proposed its existence after he and many other scientists were unable to explain certain peculiarities about Mercury’s orbit. Scientists like Le Verrier argued that this had to be caused by some object, like a small planet or moon, acting as a gravitational force. La Verrier called his hypothetical planet Vulcan, after the Roman god of fire. Soon, amateur astronomers around Europe, eager to be a part of a scientific discovery, contacted Le Verrier and claimed to have witnessed the mysterious planet making its transit around the Sun. For years afterward, Vulcan sightings continued to pour in from around the globe, and when La Verrier died in 1877, he was still regarded as having discovered a new planet in the solar system.

How it was Proven Wrong:

Without La Verrier acting as a cheerleader for Vulcan’s existence, it suddenly began to be doubted by many notable astronomers. The search was effectively abandoned in 1915, after Einstein’s theory of general relativity helped to explain once and for all why Mercury orbited the Sun in such a strange fashion. But amateur stargazers continued the search, and as recently as 1970 there have been people who have claimed to see a strange object orbiting the sun beyond Mercury. Amusingly, the entire would-be discovery’s greatest legacy today is that it inspired the name of the home planet of the character Spock from Star Trek.

#9 - Spontaneous Generation

Although it might seem a bit ludicrous today, for thousands of years it was believed that life regularly arose from the elements without first being formed through a seed, egg, or other traditional means of reproduction. The main purveyor of the theory was Aristotle, who based his studies on the ideas of thinkers like Anaximander, Hippolytus, and Anaxagoras, all of whom stressed the ways in which life could spontaneously come into being from inanimate matter like slime, mud, and earth when exposed to sunlight. Aristotle based his own ideas on the observation of the ways maggots would seemingly generate out of dead animal carcass, or barnacles would form on the hull of a boat. This theory that life could literally spring from nothing managed to persist for hundreds of years after Aristotle, and was even being proposed by some scientists as recently as the 1700s.

How it was Proven Wrong:

It was only with the adoption of the scientific method that many of the classical theories like spontaneous generation began to be tested. Once they were, they quickly crumbled. For example, famed scientist Louis Pasteur showed that maggots would not appear on meat kept in a sealed container, and the invention of the microscope helped to show that these same insects were formed not by spontaneous generation but by airborne microorganisms.

#8 - The Expanding Earth

Our modern understanding of the interior and behaviors of the Earth is strongly based around plate tectonics and the concept of subduction. But before this idea was widely accepted in the late 20th century, a good number of scientists subscribed to the much more fantastical theory that the Earth was forever increasing in volume. The expanding Earth hypothesis stated that phenomena like underwater mountain ranges and continental drift could be explained by the fact that the planet was gradually growing larger. As the globe’s size grew, proponents argued, the distances between continents would increase, as would the Earth’s crust, which would have explained the creation of new mountains. The theory has a long and storied past, beginning with Darwin, who briefly tinkered with it before casting it aside, and Nikola Tesla, who compared the process to that of the expansion of a dying star.

How it was Proven Wrong:

The expanding Earth hypothesis has never been proven wrong exactly, but it has been widely replaced with the much more sophisticated theory of plate tectonics. While the expanding Earth theory holds that all land masses were once connected, and that oceans and mountains were only created as a result of the planet’s growing volume, plate tectonics explains the same phenomena by way of plates in the lithosphere that move and converge beneath the Earth’s surface.

#7 - Phlogiston Theory

First expressed by Johan Joachim Becher in 1667, phlogiston theory is the idea that all combustible objects—that is, anything that can catch fire—contain a special element called phlogiston that is released during burning, and which makes the whole process possible. In its traditional form, phlogiston was said to be without color, taste, or odor, and was only made visible when a flammable object, like a tree or a pile of leaves, caught fire. Once it was burned and all its phlogiston released, the object was said to once again exist in its true form, known as a “calx.” Beyond basic combustion, the theory also sought to explain chemical processes like the rusting of metals, and was even used as a means of understanding breathing, as pure oxygen was described as “dephlogistated air.”

How it was Proven Wrong:

The more experiments that were performed using the phlogiston model, the more dubious it became as a theory. One of the most significant was that when certain metals were burned, they actually gained weight instead of losing it, as they should have if phlogiston were being released. The idea eventually fell out of favor, and has since been replaced by more sophisticated theories, like oxidation.

#6 - The Martian Canals

The Martian canals were a network of gullies and ravines that 19th century scientist mistakenly believed to exist on the red planet. The canals were first “discovered” in 1877 by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli. After other stargazers corroborated his claim, the canals became something of a phenomenon. Scientists drew detailed maps tracing their paths, and soon wild speculation began on their possible origins and use. Perhaps the most absurd theory came from Percival Lowell, a mathematician and astronomer who jumped to the bizarre conclusion that the canals were a sophisticated irrigation system developed by an unknown intelligent species. Lowell’s hypothesis was widely discredited by other scientists, but it was also popularly accepted, and the idea managed to survive in some circles well into the 20th century.

How it was Proven Wrong:

Quite unspectacularly, the Martian canals were only proven to be a myth with the advent of greater telescopes and imaging technology. It turned out that what looked like canals was in fact an optical illusion caused by streaks of dust blown across the Martian surface by heavy winds. Several scientists had proposed a similar theory in the early 1900s, but it was only proven correct in the 1960s when the first unmanned spacecraft made flybys over Mars and took pictures of its surface.

#5 - Luminiferous Aether

The aether, also known as the ether, was a mysterious substance that was long believed to be the means through which light was transmitted through the universe. Philosophers as far back as the Greeks had believed that light required a delivery system, a means through which it became visible, and this idea managed to persist all the way through to the nineteenth century. If correct, the theory would have redefined our entire understanding of physics. Most notably, if the aether were a physical substance that could exist even in a vacuum, then even deep space could be more easily measured and quantified. Experiments often contradicted the theory of the aether, but by the 1700s it had become so widespread that its existence was assumed to be a given. Later, when the idea was abandoned, physicist Albert Michelson referred to luminiferous aether as “one of the grandest generalizations in modern science.”

How it was Proven Wrong:

In traditional scientific fashion, the notion of a luminiferous aether was only gradually phased out as more sophisticated theories came into play. Experiments in the diffraction and refraction of light had long rendered traditional models of the aether outdated, but it was only when Einstein’s special theory of relativity came along and completely reconfigured physics that the idea lost the last of its major adherents. The theory still exists in various forms, though, and many have argued that modern scientists simply use terms like “fields” and “fabric” in place of the more taboo term “aether.”

#4 - The Blank Slate Theory

One of the oldest and most controversial theories in psychology and philosophy is the theory of the blank slate, or tabula rasa, which argues that people are born with no built-in personality traits or proclivities. Proponents of the theory, which began with the work of Aristotle and was expressed by everyone from St. Thomas Aquinas to the empiricist philosopher John Locke, insisted that all mental content was the result of experience and education. For these thinkers, nothing was instinct or the result of nature. The idea found its most famous expression in psychology in the ideas of Sigmund Freud, whose theories of the unconscious stressed that the elemental aspects of an individual’s personality were constructed by their earliest childhood experiences.

How it was Proven Wrong:

While there’s little doubt that a person’s experiences and learned behaviors have a huge impact on their disposition, it is also now widely accepted that genes and other family traits inherited from birth, along with certain innate instincts, also play a crucial role. This was only proven after years of study that covered the ways in which similar gestures like smiling and certain features of language could be found throughout the world in radically different cultures. Meanwhile, studies of adopted children and twins raised in separate families have come to similar conclusions about the ways certain traits can exist from birth.

#3 – Phrenology

Although it is now regarded as nothing more than a pseudoscience, in its day phrenology was one of the most popular and well-studied branches of neuroscience. In short, proponents of phrenology believed that individual character traits, whether intelligence, aggression, or an ear for music, could all be localized to very specific parts of the brain. According to phrenologists, the larger each one of these parts of a person’s brain was, the more likely they were to behave in a certain way. With this in mind, practitioners would often study the size and shape of subjects’ heads in order to determine what kind of personality they might have. Detailed maps of the supposed 27 different areas of the brain were created, and a person who had a particularly large bump on their skull in the area for, say, the sense of colors, would be assumed to have a proclivity for painting.

How it was Proven Wrong:

Even during the heyday of its popularity in the 1800s, phrenology was often derided by mainstream scientists as a form of quackery. But their protests were largely ignored until the 1900s, when modern scientific advances helped to show that personality traits could not be traced to specific portions of the brain, at least in not as precise a way as the proponents of phrenology often claimed. Phrenology still exists today as a fringe science, but its use in the 20th century has become somewhat infamous: it has often been employed as a tool to promote racism, most famously by the Nazis, as well by Belgian colonialists in Rwanda.

#2 - Einstein’s Static Universe

Prior to scientists embracing the notion that the universe was created as the result of the Big Bang, it was commonly believed that the size of the universe was an unchanging constant—it had always been the size it was, and always would be. The idea stated that that the total volume of the universe was effectively fixed, and that the whole construct operated as a closed system. The theory found its biggest adherent in Albert Einstein—the Static Universe is often known as “Einstein’s Universe”—who argued in favor of it and even calculated it into his theory of general relativity.

How it was Proven Wrong:

The theory of a static universe was problematic from the start. First of all, a finite universe could theoretically become so dense that it would collapse into a giant black hole, a problem Einstein compensated for with his principle of the “cosmological constant.” Still, the final nail in the coffin for the idea was Edwin Hubble’s discovery of the relationship between red shift—the way the color of heavenly bodies change as they move away from us—and distance, which showed that the universe was indeed expanding. Einstein would subsequently abandon his model, and would later refer to it as the “biggest blunder” of his career. Still, like all cosmological ideas, the expanding universe is just a theory, and a small group of scientists today still subscribe to the old static model.

#1 - Fleischmann and Pons’s Cold Fusion

While the conditions required to create nuclear energy usually require extreme temperatures—think of the processes that power the sun—the theory of cold fusion states that such a reaction is possible at room temperature. It’s a deceivingly simple concept, but the implications are spectacular: if a nuclear reaction could occur at room temperature, then an abundance of energy could be created without the dangerous waste that results from nuclear power plants. This groundbreaking theory briefly seemed to have become a reality in 1989, when the electro-chemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons published experimental results suggesting that they had achieved cold fusion—and the precious “excess energy” it was hoped to produce—in an experiment where an electric current was run through seawater and a metal called Palladium. The response to Pons and Fleischmann’s claims by the media and the scientific community was overwhelming. The experiments were hailed as a turning point in science, and it was briefly believed that with cold fusion energy would be cheap, clean, and abundant.

How it was Proven Wrong:

The fervor over cold fusion died down as soon as other scientists tried to replicate the experiment. Most failed to get any kind of similar results, and after their paper was closely studied, Fleischmann and Pons were accused not only of sloppy, unethical science, but were even said to have stretched the truth of their results. For years after, the idea of cold fusion became synonymous with fringe science. Still, despite the stigma attached to it, many have argued that there was never anything necessarily wrong about cold fusion as a theory. In recent years, scientists have once again started to experiment with new ways of achieving a so-called “tabletop nuclear reaction,” with some even claiming to have achieved surprising success.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Animal migrations are some of the most moving (literally) phenomena Mother Nature has to offer, and these 10 amazing examples redefine the word “superlative” on a number of levels. Fastest, largest, longest and even stupidest – when animals migrate, they often do it in a BIG way.

#1 - Monarch Butterflies: It’s a Wing Thing

The mass migration of Monarch Butterflies is arguably the longest – both in distance and time – of any insect species. Conducted over a number of seasons and generations, perhaps the most amazing thing about the Monarch migration is that their overwintering refuge in central Mexico’s Oyamel Fir forests wasn’t discovered until 1975!

Will the majestic Monarchs be able to continue their epic migrations in the coming years? They face a range of difficulties, some but not all the result of human activity. Illegal logging, land clearing and simple population pressure will likely increase but besides these, regular El Nino events such as the one in 2009-2010 soak their winter refuges with rain, sleet and snow. Can the Monarchs persevere? Only time will tell.

#2 - The Great Wildebeest Migration

he annual migration of over 1 million African Wildebeest and Zebras has been well documented by filmmakers and wildlife documentary producers for decades. Every February in the Ngorongoro area of Tanzania’s southern Serengeti plains, the “Great Wildebeest Migration” begins.

The exact starting date depends on the progress of the calving season during which around 500,000 calves are born, but by early March up to a half million zebra, nearly 2 million wildebeest and around 100,000 other grazing animals are on the move, headed towards the fertile plains and woodlands of the western Serengeti across the border in Kenya’s Masai Mara region.

The final obstacle for the Serengeti’s thundering herd is also the most challenging: the Mara river. Animals already weakened by weeks of travel through dry and barren savannah offering little food or water must now run the gamut of flood-swollen, rushing waters and swarms of hungry crocodiles. Around 250,000 wildebeest will die during the course of their 1,800-mile migration but the herds have proved to be remarkably resilient.

#3 - Worst Case of Crabs EVAR

Christmas Island, an isolated Australian territory located in the Indian Ocean, is home to about 1,400 people.. and up to 120 million Red Crabs. Luckily for the inhabitants the crabs aren’t carnivorous (just occasionally cannibalistic), but their sheer volume results in a unique spectacle played out each year when tens of millions of the burrowing crabs migrate to the sea to lay their eggs.

That’s only half the story – once the baby crabs complete their marine larval phase, they clamber back onto the shore and migrate into the island’s central rainforest. Although the baby crabs are very small, they make up for their size with numbers: each adult female releases about 120,000 fertilized eggs. You can do the math, my calculator can’t display that many zeros! The “red tide” of young crabs that sweeps across beaches, through towns and across gold course has to be seen to be believed… so here it is!

#4 - Arctic Terns: Long Distance Voyagers

It’s not only human jet-setters who see two summers every year; the Arctic Tern has been doing it for countless centuries. This smallish seabird holds the record for the longest migration route of any known creature.

The Arctic Tern’s travels take it from breeding grounds in northern Canada down to the southern ocean off the Antarctic continent, and back again. Considering the terns’ indirect course used to take advantage of prevailing winds, the average bird will make a 45,000 mile (over 70,000 km) round trip each year.

Arctic Terns are long-lived birds that can live upwards of 30 years. It’s estimated that in the course of a lifetime, these long distance champions will fly over 1.5 million miles (2.4 million km)… enough to take it to the Moon and back 5 or 6 times!

#5 - Caribou: Have You Herd?

One of the longest known and best documented large-scale animal migrations is that of the northern Caribou. Not all caribou migrate and those that do, don’t always follow the same route each time. Much depends on the vagaries of the weather – and based on that, the availability of food.

The three largest herds of caribou are the George River herd in northern Quebec province in Canada, the the Western Arctic herd based in northwest Alaska, and the Taimyr Peninsula herd found across the Bering Strait in Siberia. Large caribou herds migrate from about 100 to over 500 miles each year.

A few fun facts about Caribou… did you know that herds once roamed the Great Lakes states and Maine? Though Caribou and Reindeer are of the same species, the latter term is used to refer to domesticated caribou kept most commonly by the Sami people of northern Scandinavia’s Lapland region.

#6 - March of the Emperor Penguins

Emperor Penguins aren’t the only species of this iconic antarctic bird that migrate but they are perhaps the most famous, thanks in part to the beautifully filmed chronicle entitled March of the Penguins. These magnificent creatures are highly adapted to the incredibly harsh conditions they live in; even so, breeding during the bone-chilling, pitch black Antarctic winter is a monumental achievement in and of itself.

Though the migration of Emperor Penguins to and from their inland nesting grounds may seem short compared to that of other animals in more temperate climes, the journey is fraught with hardships and the margin for error is exceedingly thin.

So well adapted are Emperor Penguins to the Antarctic’s hostile conditions, the species is not considered to be threatened. Currently around 30 colonies exist and their population fluctuates due to weather conditions and the varying distance from their nesting grounds (which remain in the same place) and the constantly shifting edge of the sea ice.

#7 - The Return of the Swallows to San Juan Capistrano

A miraculous migration, is what some call the annual return of the Swallows to Capistrano. It’s an event that has taken on the luster of romance and sentimentality as each year on March 19th – St. Joseph’s Day – the swallows traditionally make their return to the Mission San Juan Capistano in the town of San Juan Capistrano, California, near San Diego.

The Mission was founded by Franciscan friars on on All Saints Day (November 1st) of 1776 and its arched belfry soon attracted the local swallows who used its shelter to protect their nests. An earthquake in 1812 exposed the rafters of The Great Stone Church but the Cliff Swallows were not dissuaded from nesting there. Where do the swallows return from, you might ask? Their migration is actually somewhat miraculous as they fly 6,000 miles (10,000 km) south to their wintering range in Goya, Argentina, and then must make the long and arduous return trip.

#8 - Gray Whales: It’s No Fluke

Gray Whales are a popular sightseeing attraction in and around Baja California but few are aware of the creatures’ long distance migration. In fact, Gray Whales have the longest migration route of any mammal, land or sea.

Each year, these medium-sized, mild-mannered cetaceans make a round trip of 10,000-12,000 miles (around 18,000 km) between their winter calving lagoons off southern California and Mexico and their preferred summer feeding grounds around Alaska’s Aleutian Islands and the Bering Strait

Besides providing enjoyment for whale-watchers up and down the California coast, Gray Whales have another claim to fame: the 1988 effort to rescue three whales who overstayed in the arctic and became trapped in sea ice off Point Barrow. The drama was closely followed on American television and the rescue (which cost $5.5 million) entailed the use of Coast Guard helicopters dropping 5-ton concrete pillars to break up the ice and a Soviet icebreaker that helped carve a path from the whales’ shrinking pool of unfrozen water to the open sea. Cold War indeed!

#9 - Legend of the Lemmings

Lemmings are a species of rodent found in northern Scandinavia, Siberia and Canada’s arctic regions. Being a herbivore in the tundra is a risky proposition and lemming populations rise and fall – sometimes precipitously – in good times and bad. Normally solitary creatures, lemmings may go on mass migrations when biological urges dictate the need to find new feeding grounds. At times, rivers and cliffs may block their paths – be assured, though, that lemmings who fall or drown in the process of migration do not do so willingly.

A widely believed myth about lemmings is that they occasionally erupt across the arctic landscape on suicidal “death marches”, sacrificing themselves for the betterment of the species when food supplies run short. Not so – the myth was perpetuated by a 1958 Disney nature documentary called “White Wilderness”. It was later revealed that the film was made with the extensive use of staged footage, such as lemmings being filmed on a snow-covered turntable or launched into the air by (human) hand. Here’s a short video compilation from the film that features ONLY the fake footage:

#10 - Passenger Pigeons, RIP

One of the greatest migratory species in history is… history. Passenger Pigeons by the hundreds of millions used to darken American skies for hours, even days at a time as they migrated to and from their forested nesting grounds. It was said that the ground beneath their roosts was covered with up to 2 inches of droppings and the branches of mature trees would snap under the weight of dozens of nests. At its greatest, the total number of Passenger Pigeons was estimated to be about 6 billion birds. So, what happened?

WE happened… the perfect predator meeting the perfect prey. Passenger Pigeons were low fliers whose nests were easily accessible. They were also, from all accounts, quite tasty. By 1880 the massive migrating flocks were no more and the last wild bird was shot in 1900. The last of the species, a captive bird named “Martha”, died in 1914.

We know today that human hunters were not the sole cause of the Passenger Pigeon’s demise. Habitat loss was a major factor – as the sprawling forests of the eastern U.S. were cut down, the pigeons had nowhere to roost. In addition, the birds could not adapt to the emerging paradigm of The Earth Plus Humans, unlike their Rock Dove and Mourning Dove cousins. It was a “perfect storm”… from which the Passenger Pigeon was unable to emerge.

The sad tale of the Passenger Pigeon echoes into the modern age as a warning of what might be. Safety in numbers is a relative term – when the numbers add up wrong, your numbers will decrease. There was no such thing as “environmental awareness” a century ago and it’s assumed humanity has learned a lot about peaceful coexistence with the rest of the animal kingdom. The fate of the world’s remaining migratory species will prove if we really have learned, or are doomed to repeat the same mistakes.